Sunday Review

My Education, Repossessed

November 16, 2013

Loose Ends

By PETER GERSTENZANG

Like many post-grads, I’ve been struggling for years to keep up with my student loan payments. I can just about make it each month, with some modest sacrifices. For instance, doing my own dental work. But last night I had a terrible dream. In it, I fell so far behind in my payments that the government decided to move against me. They could have taken legal action, but they did something much more diabolical: They repossessed my education.

Taking their cues from the Mafia, who break a finger when you’re late with your first payment, they started slowly. They began with anthropology. In my dream, a loan officer appeared and showed me a photo of Margaret Mead. I drew a blank. This grilling continued as various vital facts drained from my head. I thought, perhaps, that such forgetfulness was a fluke. When I couldn’t remember which sex did the hunting for the Yanomami, I knew this guy meant business.

I thought things would end there. But the government was just warming up. The phantom loan officer next moved on to philosophy. He began by asking me about Soren Kierkegaard. I knew I was in trouble when I blurted out that he’d directed “Dogville.” The phantom said, “You don’t remember that ‘The specific character of despair is that it is unconscious of being despair’”? I didn’t. But I improvised, “Didn’t Kierkegaard also say that being conscious of despair was no picnic either?” For this faux pas, they added four more points of interest.

Things got worse. I couldn’t remember anything about semiotics. My loan officer did leave me Noam Chomsky’s political rhetoric — like that day in May 1982 when he apparently said something nice about America. Normally, I could have identified this as an “anomaly.” But as the repossession continued, my vocabulary shrank, too. I tried to scream, but this was a dream, so nothing came out.

The government didn’t take everything, but what they left me with was useless. Take those passages from “The Communist Manifesto.” I don’t know if you’ve been following the media lately, but quoting from it can get you hanged in an increasing number of parts of town. As I dreamed on, my knowledge continued to disappear. It finally stopped with Jamestown. I had this narrowed down to two answers. It was either the home of a religious cult, or the band Joe Walsh was in before joining the Eagles. Which thought was more distressing? (That was multiple choice.)

I awoke. And found that I could remember plenty of Proust. Arcane facts about Einstein. That women did the hunting for the Yanomami. My education, student loan be damned, was still safe inside my head. There was no way they could remove it from me. I figured I was O.K. for a while. Still, I don’t think it’s a good idea to take unnecessary chances. Especially where my brain is concerned. So, from here on in, wherever I go? I think I’ll wear a hat.